Hello, I just stumbled upon this website and I must say I'm impressed with the work that has been done here. I was actually doing something similar myself, building a SQL database of all the games ranked by Joypad and Consoles+ magazines. It was a lot of work, so I was unlucky to only found this website towards the end of my project. I believe this website could be really useful for creating lists of the best ranked games by system. Personally, I use Batocera and I prefer to have only the best games with a score of 0.90% or higher on my computer, rather than having 10,000 ROMs. A meta score is calculated but I don't think it's currently possible to filter the database with this data. Additionally, the fact that there are two scores from the same magazine for the same game can influence wrongly this meta score. In my opinion, only the latest score should be taken into account, as the first one is often just a short test of an imported version from Japan.
These are just my thoughts, but I hope they can be of help in improving this website.
Ranking by magazine rating
The review section is growing. Not fast enough but it is the section I am putting the most time in right now to fill with content. I also hope that more useful optional statistics could be added. Some sort of search query function for reviews. But this is something that the admin must look into what could be possible in the confinements of a website like UVL. And this won't happen soon I guess. I also have ideas for the review section. For example I would like to have a fixed place to place the cover of each issue on each issue site.
As for a magazine giving several reviews and scores its indeed a problem if you want accurate meta scores. Then again I don't think meta scores are very accurate in itself. Each magazine has a different perspective of what score a good game should get. I can only refer to 80s and early 90s magazines right now, because thats the bulk that I already entered. And the way magazines are reviewing are vastly different. Even if the all use a 1-100% rating its different. Some magazines like to give every good game a 90%+ rating. While other magazines only give it for outstanding games. I also think there are regional differences. I had the impression that English and French magazines are more inclined to give higher ratings than German magazines, which tend to use the whole range. And I also got the impression that magazines gave higher reviews for domestic games. French games got much higher scores in France than in UK/Germany for example. German business sims were more popular amongst German mags. And sometimes I got the impression that reviews were not very objective. I could have sworn they were "bought". This all makes it hard to have an objective 90% score. On the other hand if a game has 15+ reviews from different countries and the average score is still above 90%+ then yes, it is definitely a very good game, because it seems to be generally liked.
Back to the problem with double-reviews. The Japan first, US/EU release second review thing was something that started in the mid 90s. There are two more instances where double-reviews from the same magazine for the same game were common. For 8-bit and 16-bit homecomputers it were reviews of (budget) re-releases. Those reviews are also in UVL. And the second instance is during the time when PC games were released on disk first and a CD-ROM version a couple months later. Many magazines did a second review for the (enhanced) CD version. I personally think its OK to have all these in UVL. Especially once the excerpt of the actual review is connected so you can read the review itself. Then it might be interesting to read what the journalists had to say about it. I know that it makes the average score a little bit more fuzzy. But with mainstream games there will be so many reviews that a superb 90% game will still have a superb score. And it should be mentioned that there are many many many more magazines to be entered. Whats in UVL right now (especially in the 90s and 2000s when Joypad/Console+ had its peak) is just a fraction of whats possible to enter. A double review here and there would not have that much impact once everything is in as it does now.
BTW I wonder why you want only 90%+ games on your emulator? I think you will miss out lots of other very good games based on personal interest. A 70%-80% game could be much more fun for you personally when it caters to your interests than a 90% game from a genre or theme thats not in your interest.
And since this is about reviews I can give a general status of the review section. I am still in process of linking all the pre 1991-04 reviews of magazines that are alreay in UVL. This is soon finished. I only got the rest of Tilt and Your Sinclair as well as Zero and Zzap going. After that I will add a bunch of new pre-1991-04 magazines (starting with "Micro News"). And after thats done I will go on chronologically to 1991-05 and so on. Its possible that in the meantime other editors will add the scores of other (more modern) magazines as well. Amiga Power review scores for example are added right now by someone else. In the end I can only deliver content. When it comes to adding features or search queries or ranking options I cannot directly help.
As for a magazine giving several reviews and scores its indeed a problem if you want accurate meta scores. Then again I don't think meta scores are very accurate in itself. Each magazine has a different perspective of what score a good game should get. I can only refer to 80s and early 90s magazines right now, because thats the bulk that I already entered. And the way magazines are reviewing are vastly different. Even if the all use a 1-100% rating its different. Some magazines like to give every good game a 90%+ rating. While other magazines only give it for outstanding games. I also think there are regional differences. I had the impression that English and French magazines are more inclined to give higher ratings than German magazines, which tend to use the whole range. And I also got the impression that magazines gave higher reviews for domestic games. French games got much higher scores in France than in UK/Germany for example. German business sims were more popular amongst German mags. And sometimes I got the impression that reviews were not very objective. I could have sworn they were "bought". This all makes it hard to have an objective 90% score. On the other hand if a game has 15+ reviews from different countries and the average score is still above 90%+ then yes, it is definitely a very good game, because it seems to be generally liked.
Back to the problem with double-reviews. The Japan first, US/EU release second review thing was something that started in the mid 90s. There are two more instances where double-reviews from the same magazine for the same game were common. For 8-bit and 16-bit homecomputers it were reviews of (budget) re-releases. Those reviews are also in UVL. And the second instance is during the time when PC games were released on disk first and a CD-ROM version a couple months later. Many magazines did a second review for the (enhanced) CD version. I personally think its OK to have all these in UVL. Especially once the excerpt of the actual review is connected so you can read the review itself. Then it might be interesting to read what the journalists had to say about it. I know that it makes the average score a little bit more fuzzy. But with mainstream games there will be so many reviews that a superb 90% game will still have a superb score. And it should be mentioned that there are many many many more magazines to be entered. Whats in UVL right now (especially in the 90s and 2000s when Joypad/Console+ had its peak) is just a fraction of whats possible to enter. A double review here and there would not have that much impact once everything is in as it does now.
BTW I wonder why you want only 90%+ games on your emulator? I think you will miss out lots of other very good games based on personal interest. A 70%-80% game could be much more fun for you personally when it caters to your interests than a 90% game from a genre or theme thats not in your interest.
And since this is about reviews I can give a general status of the review section. I am still in process of linking all the pre 1991-04 reviews of magazines that are alreay in UVL. This is soon finished. I only got the rest of Tilt and Your Sinclair as well as Zero and Zzap going. After that I will add a bunch of new pre-1991-04 magazines (starting with "Micro News"). And after thats done I will go on chronologically to 1991-05 and so on. Its possible that in the meantime other editors will add the scores of other (more modern) magazines as well. Amiga Power review scores for example are added right now by someone else. In the end I can only deliver content. When it comes to adding features or search queries or ranking options I cannot directly help.
Just wanted to note that UVL has been and still is for now, concerned with collecting information, not digital copies of the games themselves. For a precise rendering of this policy check the very bottom of every single page.